Workers receive some back wages from Suriname banana company

By Arny Belfor, Associated Press, Saturday 29 June 2002,12:42 PM
ET

PARAMARIBO, Suriname—The government paid workers of its banana
plantations their first wages since February, but gave no indication
of when it might reopen the financially troubled company and resume
harvesting fruit.

Most of Surland company's 1,500 full-time workers received 200,000
Surinamese guilders (dlrs 92) on Friday, less than one month of a
normal salary that can range from 300,000 to 600,000 guilders (dlrs
138 to dlrs 277).

We know it is not much, but the government is doing the best it
can, said Anand Ramkisoensing, acting managing director of the
company. Security workers, who continued to guard the company after it
was closed indefinitely on April 8, received higher amounts, he said,
but would not say how much.

The union said it was disappointed with the offering, which was half
of the 400,000 guilders (dlrs 184) it had requested and offered
nothing to the company's 600 part-time workers.

The part-time workers, many of them single mothers, have not been
able to earn since Surland was closed. They are human too, union
spokesman Kenneth Soekoel said.

The government closed the company, which is dlrs 8 million in debt,
saying it could no longer pay wages. Workers spent weeks protesting,
until June 17 when they insisted on resuming the harvest to keep the
fruit from rotting on the trees and attracting pests or disease.

After one week, the government again locked the gates at the two
plantations, saying it could not allow them to continue working
unsupervised.

The government has not said when it would reopen the company, which
produces bananas from two plantations \u2014 in Jarikaba, 30
kilometers (19 miles) west of Paramaribo, and in Nickerie, 250
kilometers (156 miles) west of the capital.

All I can say is that the government is working hard to solve the
problems, Ramkisoensing said. In the past, the government has said
it would only reopen the company if it could cut 600 full-time jobs
and reduce remaining salaries as much as 40 percent.

With the prolonged closure, Surland risks losing its sole foreign
buyer, Ireland-based Fyffes, which has threatened to break its
contract if the company does not reopen soon.

Surland's financial problems worsened in 2000 when Fyffes, a
leading European distributor of fresh produce, started paying 30
percent less for the 40,000 boxes of bananas it buys weekly. It used
to pay dlrs 8 a box, but then the price fell to dlrs 5.30.